


Canyons and Windstorms

by icedteainthebag



Category: The X-Files
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-11
Updated: 2015-10-11
Packaged: 2018-04-25 20:04:02
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,258
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4974415
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/icedteainthebag/pseuds/icedteainthebag
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Seemingly endless tasks.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Canyons and Windstorms

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you to my beta and platonic life partner dashakay, the light of my fandom life and giver of sage advice. This story wouldn’t exist without her or the rabidly endearing encouragement of squad.   
> Feedback in any form is loved tenderly: specialtrampdanascully@gmail.com, on AO3, or tumblr.

The ICU lights are dimmed at night, but those who can rest already are and those who can’t, won’t.

Maggie—Mom—is in the bed in front of her, her still form slight under starched sheets. After a few hours, the pungent sting of disinfectant has started to fade away. When Scully’s working in it, it’s undetectable. Maybe it only preys on the vulnerable; maybe people only sense it when victimized by that adrenaline-fear rush that accompanies such events.

She has called Bill— _Dana, here’s this excuse, and that excuse_ , and she expects it by now so much that she barely listens to his mumblings about whether or not this time is “serious enough” to merit the airfare. She knows Charlie’s gone on a cruise to Alaska. It seems people keep on living their lives without regard for what’s lurking around corners. She was like that once. It was a brief and blissful time.

Being the adult child within geographic proximity of an ailing mother means the responsibility for day-to-day care falls on her and she accepts this willingly, recalling all the times mom took them to the ER for slingshots to the head or other such nonsense. She patiently talks herself down from her frustration—it makes sense that she’s the caregiver, in so many ways. There isn’t much for Bill and Charlie to do. Melissa would have been here, and maybe she is, somehow. Right now, Scully feels alone with the rattle of mom’s lungs, her fitful sleep, and the quiet passing of night nurses to check on her vitals.

She calls Mulder for one reason this time, a reason as simple, plain, and painful as they get.

Being alone is too much.

She hangs up before he answers, then switches to text. A quick message— _Mom’s at VHC, ICU. I’m there too._ Scully or Dana? No name. It doesn’t matter.

His text pinged back within a minute. _Be there in an hour._

No name it is, then.

There are times when she gets tired of all the banter and the back-and-forth of their new estrangement. It was easier when they lived under the same roof but completely absent from each other. Tiptoeing around hastily manufactured boundaries when they’ve never had them is exhausting. Deciding what, if anything, is important enough to mention is too draining for a woman her age and she’s tired of trying. Life, a seemingly endless parade of perfunctory tasks. Mulder, a seemingly endless task, very rarely perfunctory. 

Scully has worked past her petulant anger that an intelligent woman like her mother ignored getting annual breast exams until it was too late. She tries to normalize it in her mind and says Maggie is just like everybody else who found out about Stage Four when it was too many steps ahead of the relief medicine could provide. It’s selfish to be angry when moments are rushing past, she tells herself. _What a waste. What a waste_.

Maggie hasn't done anything to deserve this. Such a clichéd line of thinking, like anyone ever deserves a terminal disease. There’s a paranoid part of Scully’s mind that blames someone else for this—not biology, but a consortium. The prickle of protective instinct gets her hackles up. It used to be a rage that would emerge, indignant and demanding, but now it’s an undercurrent, a perpetual even flow through every portion of her life. 

She used to say these things, these mysterious, covert overlords couldn’t be—placed her faith in science and T cells, in God more than men—but she’s weary and worn and doesn’t have the energy to contemplate and debate this time. 

It’s been a long time.

She contacts him because she needs him. They’ve attended so many bedsides and wakes next to one another. He's a part of her life, the father of Maggie’s grandchild, and it feels right to have him there. At least, it feels wrong to have him missing and she's been trying not to miss him at all.

She hasn’t talked to him in weeks, focusing instead on taking care of herself. More tea, more sleep, more thought about family and its tender bonds. Less worry about this trainwreck of a man and whatever relics remain of their decades together. She’d convinced herself it was therapeutic and good to back away, not as isolating and depressing as it truly was. A jog every day became a jog every three. More sleep became less. And when she abandoned all thoughts, nothing remained but a flickering streetlamp and the sound of the world going on without her.

Then the fatigue came.

Fatigue has always been an enemy. Fatigue breaks down walls and steady resolve. Jet lag brings thoughtless lapses and fragile consequences. Absence brings hard choices. Deaths bring afterthoughts and pain. Death sentences, the same.

There’s nothing crazy about seeking comfort in old habits, she thinks. Nothing wrong when nothing else is working. 

She needs that, at least that.

She's never denied that love is complicated but there’s complication and then there’s the heart-achingly devastating kind of whirlwind that this man provides, and always has. Like a pendulum he swings, near and far. 

Tonight, he was swinging near.

She lays her head down on the lumpy bed next to her mother. She matches her soft respiration with the raspy sound of her mother’s failing lungs. She wants to breathe for her. She wants to give her this gift. One that would last; one that would matter.

The miracle of sleep arrives.

-

So he comes, of course he does—Scully jumps awake at her phone’s alert. Her stomach flips when “Mulder” flashes on her screen, it’s still topsy turvy when she lets him into the ICU. She knows what he probably wants to say— _Why didn’t you tell me earlier_ —but he enters and looks at her, reaching out to tuck her hair behind her ear. It’s been so long since she’s had it there, like it was only in its place with him around. 

He hugs her and she’s enveloped by his trench coat. First time in a long time. She expects it to smell of storage, but it only smells of him. She’s halfheartedly thankful for that.

“She’s not responding, but she’s listening,” Scully says. She doesn’t know why she said it. Nobody knows what’s going on in Maggie’s head—these are typical fantasies of comfort.

“I know,” he says, settling into the chair beside the bed. “I think she’s enjoying the quiet.”

The quiet. Scully stands beside him, behind him, and her hand drifted to his head, fingernails tracing through his hair, stiff from gel but soft underneath. 

“Why didn’t you call me sooner?” he asks.

“It wasn’t a good time.”

“It never is,” he responds, his fingers flexing together in front of his mouth. “It’s never a good time.”

She feels the strain of everything tightening in her chest. It used to be second nature to be calm around him. Years ago they’d perfected the humdrum routine of the long-term relationship—lengths of silence punctuated by the flittering paper of a turned page or the soft slide of skin over a mess of sheets. Then the silences got longer and the bed got emptier, but she longs for that quiet, sustainable reality before it disappeared. He might too. 

She knows she's a mess. God, she was a mess before this, and now this.

“Do you remember when we visited the year of the big Nor’easter?”

Mulder breathes in deeply. “2007. We should have left a few days earlier like Bill did. That trip was a disaster.”

Scully tugs at the back of his hair, then, startled by her mindless gesture, moves her hand away. “She’s listening.”

“Right.” 

“It was the first time she’d seen us in years.” She remembers the three of them fireside in her mother's tiny living room that used to be the center of her life. Brandy burned warm in their chests and it felt good. It felt like home. Waiting for Mom to go to bed so they could screw around, tentatively stroking Mulder’s chest in front of her—she was an adult, but this display of affection still felt foreign and somehow forbidden in front of others, and maybe that’s another reason things didn’t work—as she listened to his heartbeat with one ear and with the other, tales of the trouble she and Missy used to get into. “She was so happy she cried.”

“You sure she wasn’t crying because you brought me home with you?”

“Mostly.” Her mother had moved on from her cautionary tales when she realized they did no good. “Mostly it was happiness.”

Mulder reaches out and lightly traces the ridged blue veins under Maggie’s translucent skin with his fingers. She hadn’t looked so small before. “I’m sorry I kept Dana from you,” he says.

“Don’t.”

“If she’s listening, I want her to know.”

“Mulder.” Scully leans against the arm of the chair, pulling his head against her stomach. She feels him tense, then relent. “She never blamed you. She understands.” Polite half-truths her mother would tell if she were awake. This is acceptable, to speak in her stead.

“I’m glad somebody does.” 

Scully’s fingers slip over his ear, tracing the outside curve. “Me too.”

“I’m not here to make myself feel better.” He pulls away and straightens in the chair. “How are you?”

“I’m… fine.”

“Is that why you called?”

“Yes. Mostly.”

“Because you’re fine.”

She feels tears burn in her eyes and lightly shakes her head, looking downward. Then she laughs, sounding more bitter than she expected. “My therapist says ‘fine’ is a code word.”

“I could have told you that,” Mulder says. “And I don’t charge $150 an hour.”

“Well... she was there.”

He looks up at Scully, eyebrows raised, but says nothing. Nothing was always the problem. And she was fine with nothing. 

She pulls a chair over and they sit at Maggie’s bedside in silence. She hears Mulder’s phone vibrating in his pocket but he doesn’t move. 

“I’m here now,” he says.

-

The awkward walk toward the entrance of the ICU is unsettlingly punctuated by his footsteps but not hers; she’s not wearing heels and he towers over her when he pauses at the door.

“I’m going to stay,” Scully says. 

“How long have you been here?”

She sighs, dry eyes closing for the sake of peace. “Doesn’t matter.”

“I’m not going to argue with you.” She hears Mulder shift and when she opens her eyes she thinks he seems closer, but he’s looking away. “I know how this feels.”

“I know you do.” She was a beneficiary of his empathy, a rare gift these days, and she couldn’t deny it. “Thank you.”

“You don’t have to…” he drifts off.

Does she? Doesn’t she? It’s hard to tell anymore.

She reaches out and touches his hand. He grasps it, just firmly enough. “Goodnight.”

He brings her hand to his lips and kisses her knuckles. “I know it’s not the time, but—”

“It’s never a good time.” She draws her hand away; it’s surprising how willingly lets her.

“I’ll come by again tomorrow,” Mulder says.

She waits; she thinks. “The hospice nurse will be here. I’m staying at mom’s since it’s close. You can come by in the morning around 10. You still know where it is?” 

He nods, lips pressed together.

The door swings shut; the pendulum swings away.

-

Maggie used to keep her house in good shape but the last few years it’s fallen into disrepair. Some of it was due to less frequent visits from her sons to fix the shutters and shampoo the carpets; other parts, the clutter, seemed like an attempt to keep caught up with time flying by too quickly. Stacks of papers as a filing system remind Scully of the little white house she used to share with Mulder and how she eventually banished his piles of “historical documents” to his tiny office, where he began to spend all of his time. 

She’s exhausted when she gets to her mother’s house at eight in the morning and fixes herself some tea—the kettle’s whistle snaps her awake and while her tea steeps, she takes the time to change into pajamas, fooling herself into believing she’ll spend a few hours relaxing, maybe take a shower.

Her heart flutters as she tries not to keep an eye on the clock, anticipation betraying her fragile stoicism. 

The doorbell rings at a quarter to ten and the formality of it is enough to set off a flicker of anger inside of her. When did he become a stranger?

She opens the door, he’s there, and her breath catches in her throat when he immediately kisses her, his hands tangling in her unkempt hair. Her mouth eagerly answers back, beyond her control, as he makes his way in. She barely gets the door shut.

Doesn’t matter where they are, what they’re doing, or why.

Nothing matters.

Nothing matters but the two of them in moments like these and their pure, hedonistic escapism. And the two of them don’t even matter, not in the worldly sense. Her body matters and his body matters. 

Nothing outside this room… only him inside of her.

His hands are under her tank, spanning across her back and clutching her closer, his grip against her ribcage a familiar discomfort. His cologne is light on his skin; her fingers find the pulse point on his neck, stroking it, feeling his heartbeat. Hands slip down the back of her pajama pants, underneath her underwear to clutch at bare skin and she moans against his mouth. She hops up enough for him to carry her to the couch a few feet away. 

Nothing matters.

Standing against each other, she doesn't fumble at the button of his pants or hesitate to unzip them. It’s old hat now, this desperate undressing, and his pants fall around his ankles and her hand is at the front of his boxer briefs, kneading at his hardness as she closes her eyes to his low moan. To take time is to waste time and give space for thought, of which she’ll have none. Not today.

He pushes his underwear down and grabs her around the waist, the electric touch she was aching for. 

“No. Sit,” she whispers as his hands spread along her spine. He obeys, the departure of his warmth seemingly deserved. 

She feels herself pulsing in front of him, her body making the case to her mind. Pulling down her thin pajama bottoms and her underwear in one movement, she kicks them away.

She straddles him, his button-down shirt disheveled, his mouth gasping for air against hers. Too late, she thinks as she grabs his cock and works it until he’s feverishly kissing her back. And then he slides in—she lets him slide in, a little bit of a tug because she’s tight and surely not ready and it’s been a little—long—while. She pushes down, forcing it.

_Nothing matters, it’s fine._

“Scully…”

Gritted teeth. “Good enough, just—”

He thrusts and she gasps, her palms slapping his broad shoulders to steady the rocking of her body. Her intent had been to fuck him, fuck the angst out of him and the pain out of herself, but the look in his eyes means he’s taking over. He’s going to take it from her.

His next movement upward beckons a small moan from her lips. She grips his shoulders harder and rides him, her tank top scrunching up under her breasts. Panting, she closes her eyes and listens to him accept her, feels her body accept him.

“Come on,” he says, “let it go. No silent treatment.”

She bites her lip, defiant, and grinds her hips down. She feels the spark of her clit as it grates against his groin. His thrusts get more powerful and she has to grab the back of the couch as it squeaks and she groans, tears coming to her eyes from the pain and the fear and the quivering threat of joy.

“Scully…” 

Thrust, and a whimper escapes her. 

Mulder pushes her down on the couch cushions and her head bumps against the arm. He grabs her thighs, parting them roughly, and presses his cock against her heat. “I’ll hear you,” he breathes. He pushes himself in and she arches her hips to meet him. “Tell me.”

“Yeah,” she responds as his fingers press into her inner thighs. “Take it.”

“Take it away?” 

She looks up and answers him on a soft breath. “Yes.”

He shifts his hips, circling them, getting deeper. Almost too deep. “I can’t.”

She cups his face. “I know.”

“A mistake shouldn’t feel so good.” He rolls against her again, slow and sweet torture. 

“Our mistakes have always felt this way, Mulder.” Her fingertips trace his lips and he kisses them. “Are you regretful?”

“I’m too old to have regrets.”

“You’re never too old for that.” She thinks of her mom in the hospital, hooked up to machines, trying to breathe. “It’s whether you can live with them.”

Their pace changes, downshifting from frantic to achingly slow. This is a dangerous place to be, she knows, where she lets him in this way. Other ways. She wraps one leg around him, pressing her heel into the firm flesh of his ass. And then he kisses her—kissing in this position has always been awkward, unfortunately, but she threads her fingers into the back of his hair and sucks on his gorgeous lower lip. His hand slides between them, the tiny space between them, and she slips her own hand to that place and pushes him away. She fingers her clit, stroking between two fingers, pressing and circling as she feels every inch of him slipping deeper.

“Can I come in you?” 

“I don’t care.” He never used to ask. She rubs her clit harder, faster. The slow rise of her orgasm masks the undercurrent of how and why it doesn’t matter.

“Are you coming?”

“I’m trying,” she says, tinged with frustration. “Fuck, I’m trying.”

“Do you need me to—”

“Jesus, Mulder, I need you to stop talking.” His flesh is hot and damp against her hand. She bucks her hips. “Just give me your dick.”

And then his weight is on her, crushing her hand against her throbbing clit and he growls through gritted teeth and lets go, several deeply uncomfortable thrusts and she smiles through the quick flashes of pain. “Is that it? Is that what you want?”

“Yes.” Her body twists under him, contorting to his powerful strokes. “Yes.”

She cries out with his last few jerky thrusts and he comes. His expression is a swirl of anger and relief. 

He pulls out and shifts to press his forehead against hers. “Fuck,” he breathes. “Did I fuck this up?”

She softly laughs once, her eyes filling with tears. “No. It was already.”

Silence fills the room. Her fingers stroke his broad back, muscled lines under his white starched shirt.

He takes a deep, lingering breath, his nose nudging hers. “Is this one of those ‘can’t live with you, can’t live without you’ scenarios? Because I’m  
definitely the ’can't live without you’ half."

She swallows to clear the lump in her throat as their eyes meet. “I…I have to get back,” she whispers.

“I know.” Not for hours, but he knows that. “I know.” He kisses her softly on the lips. “Call me later.”

She always does, for one reason or another.


End file.
